Masterpieces of American Architecture
240
Masterpieces of American Architecture
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| ISBN-13: | 9780486147277 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Dover Publications |
| Publication date: | 02/20/2013 |
| Series: | Dover Architecture |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 240 |
| File size: | 57 MB |
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Masterpieces of American Architecture
Museums, Libraries, Churches and Other Public Buildings
By Edward Warren Hoak, Willis Humphry Church
Dover Publications, Inc.
Copyright © 2002 Dover Publications, Inc.All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-486-14727-7
CHAPTER 1
PART I
MEMORIALS
* * *
THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL WASHINGTON, D.C. HENRY BACON, ARCHITECT
* * *
THE LIBERTY MEMORIAL KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI H. VAN BUREN MAGONIGLE, ARCHITECT
THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL
WASHINGTON, D.C. JANUARY, 1917
HENRY BACON, ARCHITECT
Awarded Gold Medal of the Panama-Pacific Exposition at San Francisco, 1915, and Gold Medal of Honor of A. I. A., 1923
ON THE GREAT AXIS, planned over a century ago, we have at one end the Capitol, which is the monument of the Government, and to the west, over a mile distant from the Capitol, the monument to Washington, one of the founders of the Government. The Lincoln Memorial, built on this same axis still farther to the west, by the shore of the Potomac, is the monument of the man who saved the Government, thus completing an unparalleled composition which can not fail to impart to each of the monuments a value in addition to that which each standing alone would possess.
From the beginning of my study I believed that this memorial of Abraham Lincoln should be composed of four features—a statue of the man, a memorial of his Gettysburg Speech, a memorial of his Second Inaugural Address, and a symbol of the union of the United States, which he stated it was his paramount object to save—and which he did save. Each feature is related to the others by means of its design and position, and each is so arranged that it becomes an integral part of the whole, in order to attain a unity and simplicity in the appearance of the monument.
The most important object is the statue of Lincoln, which is placed in the center of the memorial, and, by virtue of its imposing position in the place of honor, the gentleness, power, and intelligence of the man, expressed as far as possible by the sculptor's art, predominate. This portion of the memorial where the statue is placed is unoccupied by any other object that might detract from its effectiveness, and the visitor is alone with it.
The smaller halls at each side of the central space each contains a memorial—one of the Second Inaugural and the other of the Gettysburg Address. While these memorials can be seen from any part of the hall, they are partially screened from the central portion, where the statue is placed, by means of a row of Ionic columns, giving a certain isolation to the space they occupy and augmenting thereby their importance. I believe these two great speeches made by Lincoln will always have a far greater meaning to the citizens of the United States and visitors from other countries than a portrayal of periods or events by means of decoration.
Surrounding the walls inclosing these memorials of the man is a colonnade forming a symbol of the Union, each column representing a State, 36 in all, one for each State existing at the time of Lincoln's death; and on the walls appearing above the colonnade and supported at intervals by eagles are 48 memorial festoons, one for each State existing at the present time.
I believe this symbol representing the Union, surrounding the memorial of the man who saved the Union, will give to them a great significance that will strengthen in the hearts of beholders the feelings of reverence and honor for the memory of Abraham Lincoln.
By means of terraces the ground at the site of the Lincoln Memorial is raised until the floor of the memorial itself is 45 feet higher than grade. First a circular terrace 1,000 feet in diameter is raised 11 feet above grade and on its outer edge are planted four concentric rows of trees, leaving a plateau in the center 755 feet in diameter, which is greater than the length of the Capitol. In the center of this plateau, surrounded by a wide roadway and walks, rises an eminence supporting a rectangular stone terrace wall 14 feet high, 256 feet long, 186 feet wide. On this rectangular terrace rises the marble memorial. All the foundations of the steps, terraces, and memorial are built on concrete piling which extends down to the solid rock.
Three steps 8 feet high form a platform under the columns. This platform at its base is 204 feet long and 134 feet wide.
The colonnade is 188 feet long and 118 feet wide, the columns being 44 feet high and 7 feet 5 inches in diameter at their base.
The total height of the structure above the finished grade at the base of the terrace is 99 feet. The finished grade at the base of the terrace is 23 feet above grade; the total height of the building above grade is 122 feet.
The outside of the Memorial Hall is 84 feet wide and 156 feet long. The central hall, where the statue stands, is 60 feet wide, 70 feet long, and 60 feet high. The halls where the memorials of the speeches are placed are 37 feet wide, 57 feet long, and 60 feet high. The interior columns are of the Ionic order and are 50 feet high.
Congress appropriated the sum of $2,939,720 for the construction of the memorial according to the approved design, including retaining wall and approaches, statue of Lincoln, and steps, but excluding the lagoon construction and construction of roads and walks around the memorial and leading thereto.
The statue of Lincoln is by Daniel Chester French. The seated figure is 20 feet high, carved of Georgia marble.
The two murals are by Jules Guerin. They are 60 feet long by 12 feet high, painted on canvas with weather-proof paint, a mixture of pigment with white wax and kerosene. The decorations are affixed to the wall with a mixture of white lead and Venetian varnish. These decorations typify in allegory the principles evident in the life of Abraham Lincoln. There are six groups, each group having for a background cypress trees, an emblem of eternity. The decoration above the Gettysburg Address typifies, in the central group, Freedom and Liberty. The left group represents Justice and Law and the right group, Immortality. The decoration above the Second Inaugural Address has for the motive of the central group, Unity. The left group typifies Fraternity, and the right group represents Charity.
HENRY BACON From "Art and Archœology"
THE LIBERTY MEMORIAL
KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI. MARCH, 1928
H. VAN BUREN MAGONIGLE, ARCHITECT
IT IS THE MEMORY of the patriots who sacrificed their lives for their country in the World War which must be the inspiration for our life in the new world revealed to us by that war. Therefore this Memorial Shaft signifies: The Flame of Inspiration, guarded by the Spirits of Honor, Courage, Sacrifice and Patriotism, burning forever upon an altar high erected in the skies, a pillar of cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night, to lead men out of the bondage of strife into the promised land of peace.
The Shaft is the Memorial proper; the other elements are: a great Frieze depicting the Progress of Civilization toward Peace; and two small buildings, Memory Hall and a Museum of memorabilia. The form of the Shaft in plan was evolved from the very evident necessity for strong shadows plainly visible at great distances. It is 216 feet high and its proportions are those of a tower rather than a column. Out of the huge cylinder are hewn a cluster of four buttresses and four round piers which soar aloft in unbroken lines to The Altar of Sacrifice, surrounded by four colossal Guardian Spirits, forty feet high, which seem to carry the bowl of the censer upon the tips of their up-stretched wings. Here Robert Aitken, N.A., has achieved architectonic sculpture of great scale, great simplicity and power. These figures are designed somewhat in the spirit, although on a vastly larger scale, of the famous sculpture in the portals of the Cathedral of Chartres.
The effect of flame is produced by the use of steam electrically colored. The upper part of the Shaft is lighted by four banks of powerful flood lights, placed two and two on Memory Hall (the Legion Building) and the Museum, so that the altar seems to float in the night sky. Access to the Shaft is through a bronze door having panels of pierced work, the monogram of the Liberty Memorial Association alternating with heraldic eagles.
The Memorial Court terminates the southerly approach and is in essence a paved terrace with the Shaft at its center, flanked on the east by Memory Hall and on the west by the Museum. On both sides of the buildings are monumental flights of steps, 24 feet wide, descending to the level of a broad terrace, from which the visitor may easily see and study the Frieze, which will be 400 feet long and 13 feet high, containing hundreds of figures. The north wall itself is 488 feet long and 48 feet high. Every stone in this wall, comparable in magnitude to the Place of Wailing in Jerusalem, was carefully studied as to size, shape and color in its relation to its fellows. The Court is paved with Indiana limestone and pebble mosaic; the central portion is lower than the level on which the buildings stand, in order to shut off the view of unsightly railroad yards. The entrance to the Court from the south is guarded by two colossal sphinx-like figures typifying Memory and The Future, which conceal their faces with their wings; Memory faces east towards Flanders Fields and the seat of war, The Future faces west where "the course of empire takes its way," and is veiled as the future is veiled; the folds of a heavy hood shroud the head of Memory. When the trees along the southerly wall reach full stature they will almost conceal the two memorial buildings from the approach roads, and the full value of these figures, whose lines and masses interplay with those of the Shaft, will then be apparent.
The memorial buildings face the Court at either end with open porticoes, lined with deep blue mosaic carefully graded in shade from almost black at the top to a much lighter shade at the bottom, with a border of black and gold. Two bronze lanterns are so placed that they light the porticoes but are themselves invisible from the Court. The six recessed panels on each side of the buildings are filled with tile mosaic similar to that in the porticoes but lighter in tone; this treatment gives these recesses the emphasis they require when seen from a distance.
Memory Hall is a meeting room for several patriotic societies. It has a vaulted and panelled ceiling, which has ornamented bands between the panels perforated for ventilation. The tesselated floor is of lino-mosaic and all marble in the two buildings is Napoleon Grey marble. In the wainscot of Missouri walnut encircling the lower walls on the north, east and south sides, are set decorative maps by D. Putnam Brinley, showing the spheres of action of the American Army and Navy. At the westerly or entrance end of the room are four bronze tablets bearing the names of all those from Kansas City who died in the World War. Completing the significant decoration of this end of the room is a doorway treated in bronze as a memorial of the American Legion. On the easterly wall, opposite the entrance and dominating the room, is a mural painting by Jules Guerin.
The Museum, of the same dimensions as Memory Hall, is conceived as primarily a Flag Shrine. It contains relics and memorabilia and has a raised dais for regimental flags. The bronze doors of this building are arranged to fold back against the entrance wall and form with the tablet above them the sole decoration of that end of the room. Special alloys are combined with the bronze to produce the general effect of warm black and silver, the stiles and rails around the sculptured panels being pierced to show a silvery background. In addition to the side windows the Museum is lighted through a ceiling light of soft amber glass, with decorative border. The walls, like those of Memory Hall, are of French Caen stone of a light golden tone.
The original site consisted of 43 acres adjoining Penn Valley Park, appearing from the south to be a level plain and from the north, across an eight-acre area, as a plateau, irregular in shape and surface, about 135 feet above the Union Station Plaza. Advantage was deliberately taken of the rare opportunity to produce two distinctly different types of approaches with the Shaft as their common focus. On the south it is straight and direct; on the north it is by steps, ramps and terraces, so planned as to give changing points of view of the towering masses of masonry and the great Frieze.
Attention is called to certain refinements in the lines of the memorial: the north terrace wall arches a foot at the center, and the horizontal joints, the pavement of the Memorial Court, the southerly wall and the entrance steps of the Court all follow this line, which gives life to the mass and dispels any illusion of sagging under the great weight of the Shaft; the coping stones of the memorial buildings have a similar spring in their lines; there is a batter of one inch in eight feet on all walls, which brings them into harmony with the entasis of the shaft; and the entire surface of the southerly approach has a beautiful catenary curve, the lowest point being at about two-thirds its length from the Memorial Court.
H. VAN BUREN MAGONIGLE
CHAPTER 2PART II
MUSEUMS
* * *
THE DETROIT INSTITUTE OF ARTS DETROIT, MICHIGAN PAUL P. CRET AND ZANTZINGER, BORIE & MEDARY ASSOCIATED ARCHITECTS
* * *
THE BUILDING FOR THE FREER COLLECTION WASHINGTON, D.C. CHARLES A. PLATT, ARCHITECT
THE DETROIT INSTITUTE OF ARTS
DETROIT, MICHIGAN. COMPLETED OCTOBER, 1927
PAUL P. CRET AND ZANTZINGER, BORIE & MEDARY, ASSOCIATED ARCHITECTS
Awarded Gold Medal of Honor in Architecture of The Architectural League of New York, 1928
THE preliminary plans for the Detroit Institute of Arts were presented to the Detroit Arts Commission in 1920, with a report summing up the results of the study of all the data available on existing museums. This report advocated some rather fundamental departures from the museum planning usually followed in the United States; and these innovations became the basis of the general scheme of the Detroit Museum. It is necessary to add that it was the wish of the Commission that the Museum should harmonize in character and materials with the existing Library which faces it on Woodward Avenue, and that the building should be considered as one unit of a group of buildings which at a future time will extend over the whole square. The respects in which the Museum of Detroit differs fundamentally in plan from other museums in America, may, however, be described in some detail.
In the general plan, the usual scheme, sometimes called the "box plan," has been discarded. According to this arrangement, a compact area, enclosed by blank walls and lighted by skylight or artificial lighting, is cut up into galleries grouped in such a way that the visitor is forced either to retrace his steps constantly, or to leave out many of the rooms in threading the intricate circuit. In the Detroit Museum the exhibition rooms are so arranged that the visitor is guided imperceptibly, as it were, along an orderly route. Corridors have been eliminated as wasteful of exhibition space, and unnecessary, with a plan which divides the building into sections that are easily accessible without them. The monumental staircase, hitherto a traditional feature, has been discarded as inappropriate to a museum of moderate size, and because it seems to confront the public with an unnecessary hardship, for which its monumental value is hardly a compensation. In the Detroit Museum, the main exhibition floor is reached by several short flights of steps separated by wide level spaces, so that they may be climbed without fatigue. There are three entrances: one for the public, one for the administration, and one for the reception or shipment of works of art. This solution has been adopted as the one providing the best means of supervision.
In the division of the main departments, the arrangement ultimately adopted was that of an American, a European, and an Oriental department. In each of these sections the painting, sculpture, and arts and crafts of the specified civilization are grouped together, and the exhibition rooms are distributed in chronological order, so that the visitor following the whole circuit may obtain a comprehensive survey of the development of art in all its forms. Besides these divisions there are:
A. A group of temporary exhibition rooms to be used singly or "en suite," and which can be shut off during the hanging or disrupting of a temporary show without interference of the regular circuit.
B. A group of study galleries supplementing the exhibition rooms on the ground floor. These galleries, accessible to students and craftsmen engaged in technical work, are provided with every facility for close study, copying and comparison, and are cut off from the general public. They may also be used as a reserve for material to be exhibited on the main circuit.
C. Two vast storages are provided as a general reserve.
D. A department of prints and one of textiles are provided on the ground floor, and on the third floor there is a gallery for exhibitions of contemporary painting.
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
FOREWORD"PREFACE, by Paul P. Cret"
PART I - MEMORIALS
"THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL, Washington, D. C. Henry Bacon, Architect"
"THE LIBERTY MEMORIAL, Kansas City, Missouri. H. Van Buren Magonigle, Architect"
PART II - MUSEUMS
"THE DETROIT INSTITUTE OF ARTS, Detroit, Michigan. Paul P. Cret and Zantzinger, Borie & Medary, Associated Architects"
"THE BUILDING FOR THE FREER COLLECTION, Washington. D. C. Charles A. Platt, Architect"
PART III - LIBRARIES
"THE BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY, Boston, Massachusetts. McKim, Mead & White, Architects"
"THE PUBLIC LIBRARY BUILDING, Indianapolis, Indiana. Paul P. Cret and Zantzinger, Borie & Medary, Associated Architects"
"THE DETROIT PUBLIC LIBRARY, Detroit, Michigan. Cass Gilbert, Architect"
PART IV - CHURCHES
"THE CHURCH OF ST. VINCENT FERRER, New York City, New York. Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, Architect"
"THE MADISON SQUARE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, New York City, New York. McKim, Mead & White, Architects"
PART V - PUBLIC BUILDINGS
"THE NEBRASKA STATE CAPITOL, Lincoln, Nebraska. Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, Architect"
"THE PAN-AMERICAN UNION BUILDING, Washington, D. C. Albert Kelsey and Paul P. Cret, Associated Architects"
"THE TEMPLE OF THE SCOTTISH RITE, Washington, D. C. John Russell Pope, Architect"
PART VI - HOTELS
"THE SHELTON HOTEL, New York City, New York. Arthur Loomis Harmon, Architect"
"THE HOTEL TRAYMORE, Atlantic City, New Jersey. Price & McLanahan, Architects"
PART VII - OFFICE BUILDINGS
"THE BARCLAY-VESEY BUILDING, New York City, New York. McKenzie, Voorhees & Gmelin, Architects"
"THE BUSH BUILDING, New York City, New York. Helmle & Corbett, Architects"
"THE TRIBUNE TOWER, Chicago, Illinois. John Mead Howells and Raymond M. Hood, Associated Architects"
"THE WOOLWORTH BUILDING, New York City, New York. Cass Gilbert, Architect"